Not content with voyaging up the Amazon or making acclaimed documentaries about grizzly men, it seems that Werner Herzog also helps out Hollywood movie stars in peril.

When Walk the Line star Joaquin Phoenix overturned his car on a winding Los Angeles sideroad last Thursday, it was the 63-year-old German director who sprang to his rescue.

Phoenix, who received a best actor Oscar nomination earlier this week, flipped his car over when the brakes failed on a road above Sunset Boulevard. As he lay, disorientated, in the wreckage, he heard a gentle tap on the passenger window.

"There was this German voice saying 'Just relax'," the 31-year-old actor recalled, adding that Herzog then helped him from the vehicle. "There's something so calming and beautiful about Werner Herzog's voice," Phoenix said. "I felt completely fine and safe." Herzog has a home near where the accident occurred.

But like all do-gooding superheroes, Herzog refused to stick around and take the glory. "I got out of the car and I said thank you," Phoenix said. "And he was gone."